Laid upon the landscape with Virginia

From The Virginia Woolf Day Book…

…the windows being open and the book held so that it rested upon a background of escallonia hedges and distant blue, instead of being a book it seemed as if what I read was laid upon the landscape not printed, bound or sewn up, but somehow the product of trees and fields and the hot summer sky, like the air which swam, on fine mornings, round the outlines of things.

From ‘Reading’, Essays II by Virginia Woolf

View of the right hand border from the summer house

Each morning I read that day's quote from my literary heroine's Day Book. 

Today's quote was especially apt, given that summer appears to have arrived and for the first time this year I sat in the sunshine and finished reading my  latest novel selection,  before rescuing the summer bedding from the greenhouse to allow it to get acclimatised in preparation for filling the hanging baskets and yard tubs later this month.

A  task I delight in.

Pablo reclining

Pablo cat ventured out into the garden and lolled on the garden cushions before spying a plate bearing remnants of ice cream, in the summer house, which  he surreptitiously licked clean, without realising he'd been caught on camera!

Pablo tasting...

The borders are beginning to colour up, despite having large empty sections where the offending geraniums have now departed. 

The gate that leads to Pablo's garden

Friend and gardener extraordinaire, Dorothy, has proffered many interesting suggestions for succession planting and we are planning a trip to Egglestone Hall Gardens shortly to remedy the gaps. 

A wonderful time of promise in the garden - a mix of expectation tempered with the gardener's inspiration.